Books

by Helen Walsh

I can't really say I enjoyed this book nor would I say that I would recommend it, but it certainly left an impression. I can't help feeling prissy as I write this, but the book was really just too crass/vulgar for my delicate sensibilities.

It's a story about a young woman's decent into depravity. Millie is in her last year at university and struggles with motivation, the defection of her mother, and the distancing of her best (male) friend to a relationship with a woman who doesn't get her guy's friendship with Millie, a much younger girl.

Reader be warned, there are more than a few extremely graphic sex scenes - hetero- and homo-. At first there seemed to be little point to them other than the shock value, but as the story progressed and the protagonist sank more and more into her depravity, the shocking scenes became necessarily the point. Uncontrolled highs followed by self-loathing lows.

At the end of the day, Millie wasn't a very likable character. Her best mate, Jamie, was marginally better. And I didn't really see how the crisis and its resolution was going to magically turn Millie into the person she seemed to want to become.